Xonge
by storiewriter
Summary: xonge (n. \'shən-gə, 'shē-ən-gə\) :a funeral, a ceremony in memory of the recently dead :the act of burying somebody :the act of reducing somebody's body to ash by whatever means and collecting in an urn, vase, or other such container as best to hold the remains. A week after Bentley's 26th birthday, his phone goes off in class. (Transcendence AU)


**A/N:** I'm sorry.

* * *

 _xonge (n.| \'shən-gə, 'shē-ən-gə\\)  
:a funeral, a ceremony in memory of the recently dead  
:the act of burying somebody_

 _:the act of reducing somebody's body to ash by whatever means and collecting in an urn, vase, or other such container as best to hold the remains._

 _see also: burial, funeral, maezhou, rembrance, cinrate_

* * *

A week after Bentley's twenty-sixth birthday, his phone went off in class. He could feel it against his hip, buzzing and buzzing without pause, but stared straight ahead at the demonstration at the front of the class. Bentley wasn't expecting any calls, and this unit on experimental sigil theory and application was one of his favorite classes.

The call could wait thirty minutes, he thought. So the phone buzzed and buzzed and then quieted, and Bentley immersed himself in the Master's-level.

After class, he lingered in the room and dug his phone out of his pocket. His fellow grad students bustled out, going to practicals or work-research or another class, and Bentley waited until everybody was out of the room before he said, "Call archive."

The holographic display hummed when it lifted out of the surface of the phone. Bentley frowned at the unidentified number with the country code from home. "Voice messages?"

 _"You have one new voice message_ ," his phone intoned. _"Would you like to play it? Please say yes or no."_

"Yes," Bentley said.

There was a short hum, a snap-quick burst of static, and the voice message system clicked in. " _As you wish. Time of call: 14:39. Date of call: October 12_ _th_ _, 4129. Caller number: 090-28-4564. Message to follow."_

The voice changed from the low, even tones of the phone system to a higher pitch that was even more modulated but equally recognizable as automated. Bentley leaned in close. "Greetings, Bentley Josh Farkas. It is due to an unfortunate incident that we call you, and caution that you may need to be sitting down for this news."

A pit grew in Bentley's stomach. No, this was nothing good.

"We regret to inform you of the untimely expiration of your father, Philip Frank Farkas."

 _What_?

"Please call the government-sponsored Funeral Agency at 090-28-4560 at your earliest convenience to take care of any specific cremation or urn requests and to schedule an appointment with the first available grief counselor. We offer our most sincere condolences."

No. No. This wasn't right, Bentley thought, throat tight and eyes stinging. He raked his fingers up the sides of his hair and dug into the scalp near the top. No. He stared at the holographic display, the spinning blue phone turning around and around in the center of it. No. _No._

"Again, please call the government-sponsored Funeral Agency at 090-28-4560 to take care of your father's remains and schedule an appointment with a grief counselor."

No. Bentley's chest ached with breathlessness. He stooped over in his chair, wide eyes watching the blue phone icon spin and spin and spin without making any sense of it. This wasn't right. It wasn't it had to be a joke it couldn't be right (" _Calls from the FA are never jokes,_ " a chorus of children's voices on the television, repeating it over and over until it rhymed) it had to be a joke just this once, _just this once—_

"We apologize for the disturbance, and hope to hear from you as soon as possible. Farewell."

There was a click and a hum that Bentley hardly heard over the disbelief ringing in his ears. The little blue phone disappeared. _No_ , he thought. No. This was—this was a nightmare, and Alcor hadn't eaten it. Alcor hadn't had to in a while, hadn't had to run himself ragged the way he had a decade ago, Bentley rarely had nightmares like this, had never had a nightmare like this—

" _Would you like to repeat the message? Please say yes or no._ "

Bentley gritted his teeth, stared at the blank holograph in front of him, dug his fingernails into the skin under his hair. No. No. This couldn't be, this wasn't—his father wasn't even old yet! He was barely sixty, less than half the average age of death in their country, it didn't make sense nothing made sense this wasn't right it wasn't true it was a nightmare so _why wasn't he waking up_?

" _I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. Would you like to repeat the message? Please say yes or no."_

"No," Bentley said. "No, no, no, no, no, no…"

" _I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear that. Please speak up. Would you like to repeat the message? Please say—"_

"No," he warbled, forehead pressing against the desk and entire body tense, gut aching and head screaming and eyes stinging as tears ran down onto the reinforced plastic and dripped down onto the floor. He shut his eyed as though he could reject reality if he shut them hard enough. He said, words rising into a scream, "No no no no no no _no!_ "

" _Understood. Until the next time!"_

"This isn't real," Bentley howled. "It can't be—it's not—I—" His mouth was wrenched open, strained so that the teeth were bared against the fabric of reality. When he breathed, it was like needles in his throat. He let out a shout that was more noise than word, more tears than thought, and he pulled on his hair so that it would rip out by the roots and wake him wake him _wake him up_ , but the strands didn't pull out of the skin and the dream didn't fade away and he didn't wake up.

He just pulled breaths in and pushed them out just as quickly, screaming because this wasn't real it couldn't be real and _it hurt_.

"Let me wake up," he moaned to the empty lecture hall. "Let me wake up let me wake up _let me wake up_!"

But the lecture hall only pushed his own words back at him, walls staying solid and desk not yielding to his demands and the too-real silence pressing down on him, forcing him slowly from the chair to the floor, hands clawed around nothing but air.

The air tore behind him, a dispersal of alarm magic tangible against his skin before it was cut off abruptly, sliced to ribbons. There was a sizzling noise, a faint whine, and that too faded away as a hand was set on his back.

"Bentley?" Dipper asked. "Bentley, what's wrong?"

Bentley tried to inhale to explain, but it came out in a howl that felt as though his entire body was pushing it out, and Dipper started stroking his back in response.

"Shhh, it's okay, I'm here." Dipper was kneeling down beside him, side flush against Bentley's ribs, comfortably warm against Bentley the way that his dad never would be able to again and Bentley somehow couldn't imagine that, couldn't imagine his dad not ever being there again and it hurt, his chest hurt his throat hurt his jaw hurt from the cracking and popping every time he wrenched it open.

Dipper pressed his arm around Bentley's shoulders and he was curling into blankets and pillows that smelled like Torako, smelled like home and he pressed his face into them without another thought. He tipped over onto his side, and barely noticed when Dipper settled against his back, warm and quiet and there.

Bentley screamed as though it would bring his father back.

* * *

He sat against the headboard, giant mug of cocoa cradled between his knees and his hands. He stared at the film forming across the top of it, feeling as though he could sink into the pillows and never resurface, never have the energy to climb out again. He didn't think that he'd care either.

Bentley pressed his lips together as the hot cocoa swam and his eyes stung, almost throbbing. He pushed his palms into the hot cocoa to try to soak up more of the warmth and stave off the tears.

Dipper leaned his head against his shoulder, curled into Bentley's side. He nuzzled the top of his head into the stubble on Bentley's jaw and hooked his chin over Bentley's arm. Bentley closed his eyes and pushed his cheek into Dipper's hair and let out a shaky breath.

"They said he's dead," Bentley whispered, the words filling the space around them and making the concept seem so much heavier, so much more real. He shuddered and felt his chest contract, felt the air freeze in his throat because he was, his father was dead, he would never be able to call his dad and laugh about the antics Dipper and Torako got into together, to ask about his dad's latest paper, his day, what he'd eaten if he'd eaten tell him that he needed to eat.

He choked and buried his face into Dipper's scalp. Dipper tensed, then curled in closer, wings wrapping around him tighter than before. Bentley's mug of cocoa trembled against his thighs, and he gritted his teeth again.

"They said he's dead." Bentley's breath came quicker, fell away faster, and he curled in on himself. "They said he's _dead_."

The mug of cocoa floated out of his grasp to rest on the bedside table and Dipper crawled over him, cheek pressed against Bentley's and Bentley was cocooned in warmth. He said nothing, said none of the platitudes Bentley dreaded, just nestled his chin into Bentley's shoulder and breathed—slow in, slow out.

Bentley, eyes aching, heart aching, couldn't breathe with him.

* * *

He stood alone in the entryway of his father's apartment, having chased Dipper and Torako off before heading over. The air there wasn't heavy, the lights were on, but Bentley felt as though he were suffocating in darkness again. Bentley took a step forward, then another, then another, until he had reached the chair and was gripping its back tight. He pressed his lips together and stared around the kitchen.

There was the stain in the wall where his dad had left the stove on and the heat regulator had fritzed, sending a blast of fire up to lick the bottom of the cabinetry above the stove. It had added personality to the kitchen, his dad had said. There was his stack of coffee mugs, already used, piled in the sink without a care; he must have been just about to wash them the next day, Bentley thought. He grit his teeth together, looked to the other side of the kitchen.

There was the hallway, lone light in the middle flickering. He'd been bugging his dad about replacing the core on that thing for _ages_ now, and there it was, flickering, flickering, on the cusp of going out but hanging on for its last few moments; for the last few minutes until it finally depleted its energy and—

 _"He slipped. Fell. That's all; just stepping out of the TranspoPod, late at night with nobody around. Cracked his head open; we think he was alive for a couple minutes after, but it's tricky to tell with head injuries."_

—died out. Bentley swallowed the lump in his throat. He loosened his grip on the chair, fingers sliding off the back as he made his way to the light, stared up at the flickering light. Where did his dad keep the extra cores again? He couldn't—

 _"But that's why he had the HealthAlert; everybody has one, so why was nobody there soon enough?" Dipper, Brother, Warmth, a line of comfort, his shield against the officer in charge of reporting his father's death to him, and Bentley was out of tears and just couldn't._

—remember. His room? The spare closet? By the all-purpose Kettlemaker in the kitchen, on its shelf in the far corner of the counter? Bentley scrubbed a hand down his face and ignored how the fingertips trembled. He stared up at the light, the way it flickered and the hallway shifted, moved around him, light and dark and light and dark and light again. Knowing his father, it was probably on his—

 _"Unfortunately we are not infallible. Our system is one of the best in the world, but all of our members were out on call; the first arrived maybe moments after your father's passing. It…I give you my most sincere condolences for the untimely loss of your father, Bentley Farkas."_

—desk, but when Bentley turned his attention to that room's door at the end of the hall, slightly ajar, just enough that he could see how uncannily dark it was inside, he didn't think he wanted to go in. Bentley sighed, the exhale more of a rattle than a smooth, easy slide, and stared back up at the flickering light again with aching eyes.

How was he supposed to fix this? Maybe he could ask Torako to grab a core on the way over from her fa—her parent's, and they could fix it then. He wasn't tall enough to do it on his own anyways; he always used to climb onto his father's back, swing his legs over his father's shoulders and reach up, small hands popping out the core and inserting the new one.

They hadn't done that, Bentley realized in a way that was soft and quiet and hit him without leaving pain, since Dipper had started stalking him. Bentley couldn't help the laugh that pulled out of him, bouncing off the too-quiet walls and startling him with how similar it sounded, how it made him straighten and look to the living room, hope blooming in his chest with an aching fierceness and—

 _"…yeah." When was it ever timely?_

—how the hope strangled the breath from him when it died, when he saw that the light in there had been left on, how his father's jacket was draped over the office chair, how there were still stacks of old-bound-books reaching up and above the height of the desk, the Readers scattered at convenient locations. How his father was there, he was _there_ but he also wasn't and he was never going to be again and Bentley didn't know he was on the ground until his knees were throbbing and his hands were stinging and he was hunched over. His eyes stung, his chest ached, his nose burned and he was suddenly too tired to hold himself up. Bentley's forehead pressed against the floor, then he tipped over and just lay there, staring at the blurry stack of old-bound-books until they became unrecognizable.

The light gleaming off the shadowed corners of the books vanished, and Bentley knew without looking that the core in the hallway had finally given out.

* * *

It could have been moments later, it could have been days or eons or hours, when he heard the door to the apartment open. Bentley closed his eyes and opened them in a motion too slow to be a blink, and knew that he should get up. He should get up if only so that the worry in Torako's calling voice didn't thicken, if only so that he was okay, he had to be okay he—

"Bentley? Bentley, are you alright?"

—wasn't okay. He wasn't. Bentley couldn't even find the energy to turn his head to look at Torako, could only stare at the books and the way their pages blurred into their covers, blues and browns and vibrant yellows dulling into pale off-white.

How many times had he seen his father easing those books open, fingers sliding down the pages and thumbing over spots where the binding was thinner? How many times could he have opened them, over and over, eyes shining behind his fritzing hologlasses, brow creased in thought, in wonder? How come? _How come_?

"…Bentley, come on, shhh, shhh," Torako stroked his hair, his back, his cheeks. She moved into his line of sight, and he didn't mean to but he shifted his focus to her. Her eyes were wide, red-rimmed, darting between his. "Bentley, it's o…we should go. You can make sure everything's fine another day. _I_ can come back and fix things up if you want me to. Come on, Ben."

It was a while before Bentley cracked his mouth open, and when he did what came out was, "The light in the hall is out."

He hadn't realized before just how much he sounded like his father.

Torako paused, then went back to stroking his hair. "Yeah," she said, a little quieter than before, but he could tell she didn't understand. "It is."

"…it's out," he whispered, and he finally found enough energy to lift his free arm, drape it over Torako's own. "It's out."

She bent over, slowly, pressed her forehead to his, her nose to his. "Come on," she murmured, breath whispering over his skin, across the contours of his cheeks. It was warm for a moment, and then colder than before. "Let's get you back to my place. You can't stay here. We'll have somebody come and package everything up for you."

Bentley closed his eyes and he just wanted to let his arm fall. He didn't feel like getting up, didn't feel like doing anything at all; not sleeping, not eating, not even staring. But when he opened his eyes, all he could see was Torako, the way her eyes were tight with worry and the fear in the cast of her brows and he told himself _, move_.

"Okay," he said, having to think about pushing the sound out, about moving his lips and tongue. It was exhausting, exhausting to do and exhausting to think that you had everything back only to realize that no, it was a mirage in the desert.

Torako shifted her head so that her lips were between his eyes and she pressed them there for a moment before pulling him into her arms, cradling him between them, and stood. Bentley leaned his head against her collarbone, his view of the books blocked by her broad shoulders. For a moment, he felt the room around him, smelled roasted coffee lingering in the air. Then Torako stepped forward and they passed through the moment.

Bentley closed his eyes and didn't speak.

* * *

Bentley woke up struggling to pull himself from Torako, briefly disoriented by the sudden switch from pushing through the darkness,

 _chasing his father, chasing tora chasing dipper chasing their backs as they moved away from him moved shoulder to shoulder arm to arm with his father_ ,

to shoving his palms against Torako's shoulders.

"Bentley!" She hissed, hands firm against the undersides of his arms. Dipper's were against his back, rubbing in slow, steady circles. "Bentley, calm down, it's okay! I'm here, it's just me, it's just Torako. It's okay. We're here."

He stopped pushing, stared at her collarbone, visible only by the faint light of the constellation hologram on the ceiling above, as he realized fully where he was. Bentley's chest rose and fell quickly, air rushing hot out of his slack mouth. Slowly, he curled his fingers into Tora's sleep shirt, an old relic with hand-painted letters he knew said _Alcor is my Sugar Daddy_. When he inhaled, it was at the back of his throat and the reverb of his esophagus produced a sound between a whine and a croak. He pulled Tora closer, resting the top of his skull against her skin, against faded cloth and faded letters and he wondered how much time they had left.

"Don't leave me," he whispered, pressing harder into her like she'd disappear if he didn't. "Don't leave me behind."

The hands on his back stopped rubbing for a heartbeat, then two then three then Dipper was flush up against him, arms crossing across his chest and squeezing tight but not so tight that Bentley couldn't breathe. Dipper's face pressed into Bentley's back, and then Torako leaned forward so that her chin was on Bentley's shoulder, her arms sliding around the both of them.

"I won't," Tora murmured, lips brushing the back of his head as she tilted hers. "Just you don't go skipping out early on me, okay?"

Bentley's laugh was more of a choke, more desperation and heaviness than he wanted. His back was getting wet where Dipper's face was, Dipper's arms pulling them closer together. Bentley grit his teeth and sucked in a breath only to let it out in a rough, almost angry sob.

Once, twice, again Bentley screamed without volume and Dipper shuddered against his back, both leaning into Torako, Torako holding both of them up five hours before they had to rise to face the day and say goodbye to Philip Frank Farkas.

* * *

Non-family members usually weren't supposed to sit vigil next to the portrait of the deceased while the mourners entered the dim room, but Bentley couldn't let go of Dipper, couldn't let go of Torako. They sat on either side of him, kneeling properly just as he was, propping him up when he felt as though he couldn't do it anymore. His hands were warm against the ceramic vase that held his father's ashes, palms slick with sweat and he tried to forget that it was his father he was holding because if he didn't…

"My condolences for your loss," one man Bentley barely recognized as an academic in his father's field said as he slowly knelt before the altar with Bentley's father's portrait. The man slid his hands together, bowed to the picture, and straightened his back. He knelt there for a while, silent, staring.

The air was thick with the scent of flowers, stands and streams of them gathered by the doorway, the only color in a monochrome world. Bentley looked away from the man and his soft eyes set in stern features and traced a ribbon tied around a wreath of sweet pea, _kuroyuri_ , and red spider lilies, how the shining fabric draped to the ground, the white ends unmoving in the still air. He stared until the meaning faded from them, until they were only spots and blurs and oddly alien, until they washed out into the grayscale of the room.

The voice of the man who had just paid his respects startled Bentley out of his daze. "For all our differences, I never wanted this. Again, my most sincere condolences"

"Thank you for the kind words," Bentley said after a pause and a short bow, words washed clear of meaning over the last hour of repeating them to insincere well-wisher after well-wisher. Torako pressed her shoulder up against his, as did Dipper, and when the man looked at Torako his expression changed.

He opened his mouth, then looked back at Philip Farkas's picture and pulled his jaw back up. Bentley watched as the man let out a sigh and stood, thin sheets of light casting stark shadows on his face. Before he left completely, he nodded to Bentley, and Bentley only just realized significance of the motion in time to nod back.

They sat there again, just the three of them; Dipper on Bentley on Torako, the thirty some odd chairs in the room filled with maybe eight, maybe ten people including Tora's parents. Bentley both wished there were more people who gave a damn and fewer around that he didn't even care about. The people didn't speak; they sat in respectful silence, academics on the far side of the room, the landlady and one of his father's closest friends in the middle and front respectively, Tora's parents in the middle of the very first row. Bentley looked away from them, clad in blacks and greys and whites, and stared down at his hands.

His eyes throbbed. The air was stale around him, the feeling in his legs was gone, and he couldn't bring himself to care about any of it. Bentley looked at the creases where his knuckles were and didn't think a thing.

"I can always blip us back," Dipper murmured. "You don't need to do this. It can wait."

Bentley shut his eyes and shook his head slightly, fingers curling against the slick vase set in front of him, on the floor. "No," he said. "I have to. I—I don't want to, but it has to be done."

There was a pause in which Dipper must have looked to Torako, because she then whispered, "He only has the space free for use for a week and a half after the death of the family member; this was the latest open timeslot. We couldn't put it off any longer."

She sounded hoarse. Bentley had known, even before she'd come back from that twenty-minute bathroom break with redder eyes and straighter shoulders, that Torako was just as affected. Late nights speculating about far-flung theories with the only person who would brought people closer, and to lose that…

Bentley inhaled through his nose and pressed his lips together. He opened his eyes, stinging and watering, to look at the cool funeral urn under his fingertips.

Funeral. _Xonge_. Soft hissing whisper choking on itself at the end of the word, throat closing to deny the inevitable, sound cutting off in a surprised, horrified 'uh.' Bentley felt his throat closing up the same way even as Dipper pressed up too close for what was accepted at such a grave event, shoulder close enough to lean on.

He would have, but Torako murmured, "Bentley, incoming."

Bentley straightened, eyes opening and head tilting back to look up at the person before him. They were all in white, and their eyes were dark, brown, almost blank. There was something bright against their chest. Bentley couldn't have seen them more than twice in passing.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," they said, their hands full of bright orange lilies, and Bentley felt the breath catch in his chest. Torako, next to him, stiffened, and the anger that simmered in his gut at the offering of a flower that meant hate lit him from the inside, put a lump in his throat. The person stared down at them, expression blank except for the gleam in their eyes that Bentley wasn't sure how to address, how to decipher and he wasn't sure that he _wanted_ to.

He twitched forward.

Torako caught his elbow, Dipper the back of his jacket. Bentley swallowed the lump back and pushed his hands onto the cover of the vase. He looked up, then nodded sharply, fighting the curl of his lip away. He focused on the splash of orange held against the person's white-clad breast, the way it glowed against his skin in soft reflected light, and the only things stopping Bentley from leaping up and shoving this bastard out of the damn room was the weight of his father before him, the hands in his jacket, and the fact that he was _not_ going to allow _anybody_ to disrupt this funeral.

His fingers curled into loose fists, palms still pressed against the white glaze, knuckles biting into porcelain biting into knuckles. And Bentley shifted forward, more on his toes and knees, weight placed in his shoulders.

"Thank you for the kind words," he said, syllables scraping over the walls of his throat and around the edges of his tongue, long, slow, even. The other person blinked, but only bowed back as Bentley forced himself to lower his head. On the other sign of his father's portrait, the state _xongin_ rang the bell to begin service.

The person with the orange lilies set them down in front of the urn, then turned and took a seat in the very back corner of the room. Bentley took a deep breath and ignored the urge to kick the flowers away; an offering was an offering, and gifts could not be refused.

Bentley's sweaty palms slid over the lid of the funeral urn, and he grit his teeth without baring them at the opening notes of the mourning song. Even as Dipper warbled beside him, and Torako sang out ancient words now devoid of meaning, all Bentley could manage was a few hummed bars that set his teeth to thrumming.

* * *

When the funeral was over, Bentley carefully set the damn orange lilies in the corner of the room, stems up, petals down. He hefted the urn filled with his father's ashes and pressed his forehead to it.

"You're almost done," Torako murmured. She patted his shoulder. "Why don't I get you something to drink? You thirsty?"

"No," Bentley said. It was heavy, the urn.

"Water it is," she said, and moved away, hand pulling off his shoulder. "Yo, Ty, you want anything?"

"Yeah! You promised me five of something sweet and fizzy," Dipper said from where he was disassembling the chairs, sending them back into the building's storage. He tapped one last holographic key and the hovering seat, already folded in on itself, drifted to the ObTranspo in the corner of the room and entered it.

"Sounds good," Torako called, and she exited the thin sliding doors. Bentley watched her go and imagined all the ways she wouldn't come back. He took a step forward, gripping the urn tighter to his chest, opened his mouth.

She might fall down the stairs, might be sliced into by one of the door fields, might trip and hit her head on the wall, might slide a coin into the vending machine and be fried by magic and electricity, might black out might be hit by a messenger bot passing over head might be assaulted by some stranger might be—accidents happened, after all, and accidents could be lethal.

Bentley took another step, then looked down at the urn in his arms. He wouldn't be able to help carrying this, carrying his father, but this was important and he needed to keep it with him because it was his _father_. The silence was loud, the fragrance of flowers overwhelming in his nose, and his fingers too slick against the ceramic glaze of the urn.

But _Torako_.

Dipper was in front of him then, had let his eyes bleed back to comfortable black and gold even when the rest of him stayed human-shaped. He held out his hands. "Do you want me to take him?" he asked.

Bentley didn't even hesitate. He stepped forward and pressed his forehead to Dipper's shoulder, pressed the side of the urn into Dipper's chest, and let out a long exhale. Then he stepped back, slowly unfolding his arms from around the curved sides, the plain exterior. He dragged his fingers around those sides as he stepped back once, then another, arms extending to keep contact.

His fingertips lingered there against the ceramic that housed the ashes of his father's body. Bentley took a breath and thought of Torako, thought of where the nearest vending machine was.

"Go," Dipper said, and Bentley had already started to let his arms fall, had already shifted to move past Dipper. Without saying thank you but filling the bond he shared with Dipper full of gratitude and love, Bentley strode out the room.

His heart thudded as he moved from a walk to a jog, ignoring any of the stares and thinking only of Tora living, Tora breathing Tora not _dying_ , because he would _not_ lose her too.

* * *

He heard her before he saw her. "Who the fuck are you calling rude? Shit man, I'm trying to bring back my grieving friends something to damn well drink and you're calling me rude for taking more than two seconds to decide what to get?"

"I would appreciate you not using gendered terms to address me," the person said, and Bentley almost stopped running because he remembered orange lilies and gleaming brown eyes.

"Yeah, sorry, my bad for that but don't you think you have that stunt back there to apologize for as well? Who the hell brings _orange lilies_ to a goddamn _funeral_?"

Bentley rounded the corner and saw Torako standing there, hands on her hips, drinks dangling in a small bag clutched in her right and stance defensive. Her suit jacket was strained across the upper back, and the person facing her had folded his hands but something about his shoulders screamed _attack_.

"I believe in presenting the truth at all times," the person said. "Even when others may not like it, even when it is contradictory to popular opinion or unpopular opinion. Dr. Farkas and I did not get along well, and I see no reason to hide that in spider lilies and _zaigzo_. My apologies, but I will not violate my own ideals in order to fit in with society."

Bentley stepped up next to Torako, his head reaching the top of her shoulder. He was silent, and only stared at the person in front of them, hands fisting at his sides. The person glanced down at him and then back up to Torako.

"I do not foresee us getting along either," the person said. Their hair, dark and impeccably styled, gleamed in the bars of blue-tinted light overhead. "Your reputation precedes you, Ms. Lam; while I may come to respect your tenacity as I respected Dr. Farkas's, we are on opposite sides of the field and you will likely never see the light of the truth."

Torako laughed. Bentley sucked in a breath. "The truth? About fucking Alcor? Are you—shit. Are you Dr. Fantino by any chance?"

"Yes, you are correct. My apologies, but I came in here for a Pibbs, and if we are quite done here, I would like to get my beverage and go." Dr. Fantino nodded and inserted one, two coins into the machine, then selected the drink. There was a whirring, a thumping, and the person bent to retrieve the canister of Pibbs.

Bentley stared at their crouching form, the white fabric stretched across their back, and didn't budge when Torako sighed and turned to leave.

She bent over and whispered into his ear as Dr. Fantino stood. "He's not going to budge. It's not worth it."

Bentley stared and took in their features. Dr. Fantino. Dr. Fantino would be a name he remembered, a name he had half-heard but had dismissed as his father having trouble with yet another of the people in his field. Dr. Fantino.

When he'd finally half-turned to leave, Dr. Fantino spoke again. "I meant what I said. I am sorry for _your_ loss; it is hard to lose a parent."

He looked back at Dr. Fantino and his dumb hair and his white white coat and skin and shirt and gave a short, sharp nod. He finally turned and took a step to leave before a thought took hold of him and he stopped.

"My father wasn't right about everything with Alcor," Bentley said. Tora looked back at him. "He wasn't right about a lot of things. But if I remember right, your theory is that Alcor was born out of the energy of the Transcendence, out of the malcontent of the world, right?"

There was a short pause before Dr. Fantino answered. "That is correct, yes."

Bentley turned his head and finally bared his teeth. "Well you're even more fucking wrong than my father was."

Dr. Fantino's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me, but you are not, to my recollection, an expert in this field; when I heard nothing of Dr. Farkas's son getting into Alcorian Legend I had hoped you would be more logical. Unfortunately, I believe your grief is getting the better of you."

For a moment, the only sound in the hall was the buzzing of the vending machine, the slight hum of the lights overhead. Then Torako whispered, "Shit," and Bentley was moving forward, anger thrumming in his heart. He stepped up close enough that his chin brushed Dr. Fantino's smooth white coat when he tilted his head up, when he rose to his tiptoes.

"If you ever carry orange lilies again, you will burn wherever they touch you," Bentley hissed, because he was never forgiving this person and he would ensure that Dr. Fantino regretted valuing himself above all else.

Dr. Fantino stilled, breathed down into Bentley's forehead. The breath smelled like mint. "And how would you follow through with this threat, young man?"

Bentley smiled, teeth pressed together before he spoke. "I'm Mizar," he said, lower than a hiss but not as demure as a murmur, not as unconfident as a mumble. "And I will _never_ forgive you."

Not a moment later, Torako had pulled him away by the back of his coat, had hefted him up. "Okay, that's enough! Let's go, Ben. He's not worth it, remember?"

He let her carry him, hands pressing against her shoulders, twisted so that he could stare Dr. Fantino down. Dr. Fantino seemed outwardly unperturbed, but the can of Pibb slipped from his fingers and crashed against the floor, metal hitting linoleum ringing against the walls. Bentley spread his lips in something that felt more vindictive than a smile, sharper than a grimace, and met Dr. Fantino's eyes as the lights flickered overhead.

 _Orange Lilies_ , he mouthed, and then Tora turned the corner and he couldn't see Dr. Fantino any longer.

"…What did you say to them, Ben?"

Bentley stopped supporting himself on her shoulder, slumped down into her arms. Torako grunted, and adjusted mid-step, the cadence of her footfalls becoming irregular for the seconds it took to redistribute his weight.

"Nothing important," he said, resting his head against her neck. She was warm against his cheek, and if he concentrated he could feel the pulse there. It was quicker than usual; probably from carrying him. The bag rustled in the background of the heartbeats, cans clacking together.

"Fishbrains," she said. "Didn't you see their face? I mean, damn. They got over that shock pretty fast, and the next was disbelief, which means what you said was pretty outrageous. That's not nothing, Mr. Torako-can-literally-carry-me-in-one-arm."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Bentley murmured. "You're using the other arm to steady me anyhow."

"I could carry you in one, though," Torako said. "And taking into consideration the topic being discussed, it would have to be pretty…damn…" she trailed off, and stopped taking such large strides.

When Torako slowed to a halt in front of the reception room they'd been lent for the duration of the ceremony, Bentley frowned. Torako was too quick.

"You're both an idiot and a fucking luck magnet, I swear," Torako growled, and she moved past the opaque sliding doors, already opening for them.

Bentley tilted his head into her shoulder and then back up. To be honest, he was slowly coming down from the fury he'd felt in the hallway, and was becoming quite worried with what he'd let slip. "It…seemed like a good idea at the time."

"What seemed like a good idea?" Dipper asked, room empty of everything but himself and the urn and a smoking heap of withered stems in the corner. He stood from whatever he'd been doing, and the moment the door closed he was back in his actual form, wings stretching. "And why am I not surprised that Actual Knight Torako came back with Actual Blushing Maiden Bentley in her arms?"

Tora didn't set him down as Bentley had anticipated. Instead, she swung the bag of drinks to Dipper, the faux-plastic body molding around the cans and rustling through the air. Dipper caught it by the handles in one hand and raised his eyebrow. "What, no quip back? You seem a bit…frustrated."

Bentley looked up at her face, the perspective distorting her visible expression. "Tora?"

"I'm not putting you down," she said, and her arms were tight around him. "Not when you're pulling stunts like that. Fuck no. We get back tomorrow and I'm cancelling my lease and I'm moving in with you and you're never getting rid of me."

"But I—"

"I don't fucking care that you have one bed we've shared one bed all three of us on and off for four years we can fucking do it full time because fuck it fuckit _fuck it_."

"What's going on?" Dipper asked, bag having disappeared into nothing, urn held between both hands. "What—I haven't seen you so angry with Bentley, what did he do?"

"Not here," Tora said, tone clipped and tight. "Just hold onto that urn and we'll go back to my parents'. And then into the dimension garden because _goddammit fuckity_ _fuckitall_."

Bentley looked over at Dipper, whose face had gone slack and worried. "Oh—oh. Okay. Yeah, let's do that—you don't want me to blip us straight there?"

"Cameras in the hallways," she bit out. Bentley looked back up at her and he realized that he remembered that tone of voice, the way her tongue sounded thick in her mouth and her voice came out a pitch higher. His lungs dropped to his stomach and his stomach must have fallen into nothing because he couldn't feel it, couldn't feel the tips of his fingers due to the guilt.

"Do you want me to move to be more comfortable for you?" He asked, quiet against her neck.

Tora shook her head. "No. No. You stay right here right now and we're going to go back and I'm going to fucking rip you a new one because—" she took in a deep breath, chest expanding against Bentley's side, and then let it out. She closed her eyes, and then turned around, long legs making the trip out the door take moments. Bentley swallowed, lump again in his throat but for very different reasons, and avoided making eye contact with Dipper, back in human skin, as they marched out of the building.

Instead, he stared at his father's urn, the way the light slid over it from front to back, and wondered what he'd say about letting out a secret that Philip Farkas had kept close to the breast even if it could have solved everything.

* * *

"What," Torako snarled as she jabbed in the code to lock the entrance to the garden dimension. She whirled around, dropped him onto the ground, and loomed over him, tears gathering in her eyes. "Were you fucking thinking?"

"I," Bentley started, scrabbling up to a sitting position. "I."

Dipper placed a hand on her shoulder. "Tora, what's wrong? Can you explain first?"

She shrugged it off and tugged her hair, now down to her shoulders. After letting out a scream of frustration that echoed in the artificial landscape, she turned back to Dipper.

"He," Torako pointed at Bentley, hand shaking, "went and either fucking told somebody in the middle of a country that doesn't fuck around with arresting people on suspicion of summoning demons that he's actually fucking Mizar or that he actually fucking knows Alcor the damn Dreambender on a fucking personal basis."

The garden was more eerily silent than usual, Torako's ragged breath the only break between pauses. Bentley curled in on himself and looked away, down at the grass below, each blade a perfect replication of one found outside, blemishes unseen, invisible to the naked eye. He ran a hand up into his hair and wound his fingers around the strands and tried to fight the hyperventilation beginning to set in.

Slowly, Dipper bent down and placed the urn carefully to the side. He looked between the two of them, face drawn. "What."

Torako rubbed an arm over her eyes, smearing tears across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. "He actually fucking told somebody that he's fucking Mizar or that he knows fucking Alcor and the only reason we're not facing the damned pofuckinglice is that Dr. Fantino is a proud damn fool who excels in only proving points he thinks he has enough evidence to damn well prove and I just fucking—"

Torako screamed and crouched down, tugging at her hair again. She hunched over, hands and arms obscuring her face, and she slowly fell from toes to knees, her spine bending and her chest falling until she was halfway to pushing her forehead into the fake earth.

"…Ben?" Dipper asked, kneeling between them.

Bentley didn't look at him, only tugged at his hair and began to feel sick.

"I," Torako said, trembling. She pushed herself more upright with her arms, voice shaking. "was so fucking scared Ben. I'm still so fucking scared and angry and what the fuck would possess you to do that?"

Bentley glanced at her and hugged himself tighter. His stomach flipped, flopped, and he dug the heel of his shoe into the earth. The granules were all the same size, the same shape.

"Ben, _answer me_ ," she said, and the tone of her voice made him catch her eyes with his. They were red-rimmed, wet, like his this morning and last night and the night before that and he'd wondered at how dry her eyes had been in comparison but not anymore, not anymore because she had a different face but it was just like his.

"I," he started. He tugged at his hair, looked away, looked back, dropped his hand down to wrap around his leg, white-knuckled. He swallowed. He hated this garden. "He said I was letting the grief get to me. Said I wasn't an expert. Said those things about Dad. Said I couldn't make good on my threat so I. Said I was. Mizar."

Torako laughed in a way that sounded more like a sob. She crawled over and dug her fingers into the dirt. He shifted back a few centimeters, but was too scared, too full of self-hate and panic to move further.

She gripped his hands, pressed her head into his knees, and breathed for a moment there. He stared down at her, shoulders lifting and falling twice for every heartbeat.

"I can't lose you too," she said into his dress slacks, fingers curling into his palms. "I can't lose you. Not as well. Please, _please_ , I can't."

Bentley unwrapped his hands from around his legs enough to grip her hands in his. His lungs moved up from sharing space with his stomach to pressing up against his shoulders, heart a cliché in his throat, and he slowly opened his knees so that she could crawl closer and pull him to her chest. The grass rustled underneath them, and Torako was crying into his hair, into his shoulder, hands gripping his between their chests. She shook them from time to time.

"Don't ever do that again," Dipper said from above them, and Bentley looked up, barely able to see Dipper's face over Torako's head. He was shaking, golden tears running down his face. "Don't ever tell somebody here that you're Mizar again, because they _would have_ if you'd told anybody else."

Bentley looked at Dipper and swallowed, nodding. Without another word, Dipper dropped next to them and wrapped himself around their bodies, legs above theirs and arms around their backs and he nuzzled into Tora's hair. Bentley looked over Tora's shoulder, shaking, and saw his father's urn back there, shining.

He swallowed, thought of how his father had safeguarded the Mizar secret his whole life, and fell further apart.

* * *

The next morning, they left the island of Minte de Daos on the first plane out to the northeast coast of the United States. Bentley looked down at the islands behind them, the Californian Island Federation, and realized that he now had no reason to go back.

He bit his lip, looked away, and tried to tell himself it was for the best.


End file.
